Publishing and Unpublishing
And Republishing and Reprinting
Today I am going to talk about publishing. Haha! What a surprise! A topic I never, ever discuss. But, in seriousness, this might be the most elementary publishing discussion yet featured in Shelf Life. Today’s Shelf Life is about what it means to publish something. When something is considered published; where something may be considered published; and why it matters when something is considered published.
I’m writing on this topic in response to questions I’ve seen along the lines of, “I self-published my novel but now I want to shop it to an agent, can I do that?” for instance, or “How do I unpublish something I published by accident?”
So let’s do some definitions, for which I will lean on my good friend Merriam-Webster (Shelf Life’s favorite dictionary).
The definition of publish I excerpt here:
transitive verb
2
a: to disseminate to the public
b: to produce or release for distribution (specifically : PRINT sense 2c)
c: to issue the work of (an author)
There are other meanings and governance for using as an intransitive verb, but the above is the one we need. To be thorough let’s go ahead and clarify what we mean under 2c, to issue:
transitive verb
1
a: to put forth or distribute usually officially
b: to send out for sale or circulation ( : PUBLISH)
Those are the definitions we’re going to be working with. I wanted to get those out of the way because published means different things to different people. There are folks who think self-published somehow “doesn’t count” because that author didn’t engage an editor, agent, or publisher to endorse their work and stand behind it. Or that publishing something on one’s own website or blog, or a contest’s website, “doesn’t count” because the manuscript didn’t appear in an “official” publication or wasn’t sanctioned by an “official” publisher, whatever any of that might mean to anyone.
While different people may feel different ways about what constitutes publication, in a real sense and a contractual sense there is only one definition, which is this:
A work is published when it has been made available publicly or to the public.
That’s it. Here are some factors that do not affect whether a work was published or not:
Number of people who read (or didn’t read) it.
Number of stores or platforms from which the work was available.
Whether it was available for free versus for a simple fee versus for a subscription fee.
Whether it was available only in digital format or only in print format.
Whether it had an ISBN or barcode.
Whether it was published under the author’s legal name or a pen name.
Whether it was hosted by a third party (like Amazon) or by the author.
Let’s consider some scenarios:
Shared with your critique group—not published. This is a limited group of people, not “the public.” The public cannot join this group at will to access the content shared therein.
Shared on your Patreon—published. Content on your Patreon may be accessed by any member of the public who pays your membership fee.
Emailed to your ten closest friends to read—not published. Ten friends are not “the public.”
Emailed to a subscriber list people sign up for on your website—published. Any member of the public may join your subscriber list and access the content.
Hosted on your personal website—published. Any member of the public may access that site.
Posted on your WordPress blog—yes, it’s published.
Posted on RoyalRoad, WebNovel, or Wattpad—that story is published.
Made available for sale on Kindle—that is definitely published.
Once something has been published, it cannot be unpublished. It can be removed from sale, it can be deleted from all the places it is hosted, and unsold copies may be retrieved from the warehouse and buried in the backyard, but the book is still published. The event of its publication is not erased. The book may be subsequently published again by the same person, or by someone else, either in the same edition or a new one. But the first publication has happened, and can never happen again.
Materially, that means the right of first publication has been used. This is important for authors to understand because many agents, editors, publishers, and contests will only consider unpublished content and will only purchase the right of first publication. Those who will consider representing or publishing previously published works may pay a lower rate for the right to subsequent publication (ie, reprint rights), because that right typically is not as valuable.
Let’s talk about the questions from the beginning of the article: “I self-published my novel but now I want to shop it to an agent, can I do that?” Yes, for sure. You can shop that novel to any agent who considers previously published material. You cannot shop it to an agent as an unpublished work with first publication rights available, even if you delete the novel from wherever you published it (for example, deleting it from your website, from Wattpad, or removing it from Amazon). Shopping a published novel to an agent and misrepresenting it as unpublished is fraud.
“How do I unpublish something I published by accident?” That depends on whether it has actually published or whether you have merely submitted it for publication. That is, if you are publishing with Ingram Spark or directly with Amazon using KDP, or another site or service like that, there’s some processing lag time.
When you submit your files to IS or KDP, it doesn’t appear on the live site available for sale in that same moment. If I’m wrong about this I hope someone will let me know; but to my knowledge these sites all have a brief review process the file package undergoes before it appears on the live site. Even if a human being isn’t doing that review, the files have to pass a QA and some kind of machine review takes place to ensure the metadata are valid and the content files are uncorrupted.
If you withdraw your submission during that window before the book has been made available for sale, then the book was not published. If the book was made available for sale or made available to read for free—then it was published, and, as I said above, it may be removed from sale or made unavailable but it cannot be unpublished. The first publication event has happened.
After something has been published once, any future publications of that same work are reprints. I am using reprint here as a noun—“This is a reprint of Pride and Prejudice.” This should not be confused with printing more copies of something, that is, going back for additional printings or print runs when copies run out. That does not constitute a reprint in publishing terms.
Let’s say Publishing House Inc bought the rights to my memoir, The Shelf Life and Times of Catherine, and published it as an e-book, a hardcover with dust jacket with a run of 2000 copies, and a trade paperback with a run of 10,000 copies (I will never be this successful at anything as long as I live). Those 12,000 copies (if they were all made as part of one order) would constitute the first printing of the initial publication of my book. Any time copies run out, the publisher may order an additional print run to make more copies, but those copies are still part of the initial publication—nothing has changed. No new ISBN, no changes to the content, same publisher, and with the terms of the original publishing contract still in effect.
As long as Publishing House Inc makes this book available for sale, the book is considered in print (even if it is available only digitally).
After a while, Publishing House Inc decides they don’t wish to continue to make Shelf Life and Times available for sale, or perhaps my publishing contract with them expires and we don’t agree to renew. When Publishing House Inc removes Shelf Life and Times from public availability, and it can no longer be purchased new from them (used copies are likely still in circulation), it is considered out of print.
Any new publications of Shelf Life and Times after that point are reprints. Here are a few scenarios:
The rights have reverted to me, so I take my same book (no changes to the content), get a new ISBN, and publish it myself. This is a reprint edition of the original book. The title page and copyright page and cover will be different, but everything else will remain the same.
The rights have reverted to me, so I take my same book to a different publisher, who agrees to re-publish the book under their imprint. Again, they will issue a new ISBN, make a new title page, copyright page, and cover, but everything else will remain the same. This is, again, a reprint edition of the original book.
The rights have reverted to me, but I have had new thoughts and ideas since Shelf Life and Times came out so I make revisions to the content. I may add content, remove content, or revise content. When this new version is published, it will be as a revised edition or perhaps the second edition of Shelf Life and Times.
It is unusual to see second (and subsequent) and revised editions in fiction. It is more common in nonfiction because the content is subject to change. For instance, if I had released my first edition of Introduction to Psychology in 1992, it would have been through plenty of revisions and the 2022 edition, thirty years later, would be unlikely to resemble the 1992 edition. First of all the field of psychology is completely different than it was in 1992, and, second, the production of textbooks for higher ed is completely different than it was in 1992.
We don’t usually do that with novels. Stephen King doesn’t scratch his head and say, “Hmm, what if the husband learned his lesson after the cat and the kid and buried his wife someplace normal?” and then republish Pet Sematary with a different ending.
There is sometimes a belief or perception that if one self-publishes a book, and that book is good, a chain reaction will begin—word of mouth will spread, sales will take off on their own, publishers will take notice of the little self-published book that could, and soon the big houses will be knocking on the author’s door for a chance to purchase reprint rights and share in the largesse.
This has happened: For instance, with The Martian by Andy Weir, first published on Wattpad, or Fifty Shades of Grey by EL James, first published as Twilight fanfiction on AO3. However, the situation is vanishingly rare.
Consider that when a book is published—any book, self- or traditionally published—there is some number of people who will purchase that book while it is on the frontlist (meaning, a new publication in its first or second year). This number can be influenced by factors like marketing and advertising, award wins, bestseller lists, and reviews—but ultimately there will be a final number of purchasers.
If that number of purchasers is small—then the book will not generate enough buzz to get a publisher interested in reprint rights.
If that number of purchasers is large—subtract that number of purchasers from the sales potential of the book, because those buyers won’t buy again and those are sales a publisher who signs you later won’t benefit from.
Publishers are approached each day with many good manuscripts that have not been previously published and, therefore, have not had a bite taken out of their potential sales. For a publisher to take interest in a book that has already published, the title must fall into this in-between state where (A) it’s sold enough copies that publishers are forced to take notice, but (B) hasn’t sold so much that the opportunity is waning. That is, the publisher has to be able to see that the book has already been very successful under self-publishing but still believe they can increase sales by a further large margin to make the acquisition worth their while.
The takeaway here for authors should be this: Your first publication rights are your best and surest bargaining chip for securing the interest of an agent, editor, publisher, or literary magazine in your work. Don’t use those rights lightly.
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